Teach English in Shengshuhuanghai Nongchang - Yancheng Shi

Young Learners Summarative task 500-1000 words on topic; # 47. Motivation in the classroom One way to be sure to motivate your students is to make your lesson fun and relatable. In Africa, for instance, where much of my international teaching experience comes from, I found it essential to allow the students to see how what you are teaching is helpful in their daily lives. Since things like grammar and concepts like that are esoteric and not tangible to a child in Africa, whose main experience is environmental, in other words the main focus of the day is one of survival, family chores, difficult weather factors such as oppressive heat, and other challenges such as covering great distances by foot, dangerous animal and plant life, and an overall tension of basic survival…one must be imaginative when holding the attention of young learners in Africa…because they will constantly be asking themselves (and you with their eyes) why am I in this classroom instead of on the farm or at the market where I can be doing real practical things that ensued my survival, like acquiring food, for instance. What good is being inside this room doing me, or my family? So, one way to make the lesson fun and relatable is to include in the lesson, components of what the children might be doing if they were not in class at the time. A teacher could set up a lesson in which there are foods set up on a table that a child may sell or buy at market. The lesson could then entail ESA lesson planning in which a student uses proper grammar and sentence structure and communication skills to barter in English, or to use adjectives to try to make his or her food enticing for the buyer. For instance, the teacher can get the students thinking and talking in English during the engage phase by asking about the local market, even pretending that the teacher is an English tourist interested in buying the student’s foods or wares. The class can have fun as the teacher acts out like a typical bumbling American who doesn’t know much about local foods or customs, and has the students explain in English as best they can, how things are grown and made locally. This puts the students in a position of pride for their culture as they explain their culture and local customs to a teacher playing a clueless tourist. This perspective of the self-effacing foreigner puts children at ease and makes the foreigner less intimidating…and it is great fun to have a sense of humor about your self, and it goes a long way with the local people in the villages and small towns of Africa. Another way to motivate young learners is to have them understand what a great service learning English is to their family. When a young learner understands that they are in fact better able to bring a new language into their family, than their elders, they feel a true sense of pride and inclusion in the family matters, more than just as a child, doing small chores, etc. When you help the young learner understand that they are bringing into their family a language that can open the family up to new opportunities, and more abundance by being able to communicate with and understand the language of “first world development” and international trade, and the future of technology, etc., the child acquires a lesson of self worth, maturity and capability, to go along with the very useful skill of being able to communicate in English which is used throughout the world. So, in conclusion, a great way to motivate young learners, in places like Africa especially, is to keep it fun – remember, they are kids- and also to give them a sense of self pride and importance as they are helping their family in a way that perhaps only they can, and this is so vital for children in developing countries, motivate them by having them understand that they are needed, they are the future, and they are in a safe place with their friends, and a caring teacher, and that this class time, and especially them and their time…has great worth.